Introducing Madalynne O’Hare
by Fanny Tompkins
Summary: A young girl on a quest for justice captures the hearts and minds of the Pony Express riders.
1. Chapter 1

Introducing Madelyn O'Hare

Chapter 1

The dry dusty air seemed to choke Maddy. Her mother's hand, usually a comfort, held her close. There was no comfort in that hand now. Maddy watched her father, her tall, handsome father, with snapping black eyes and curling black hair. He stood as still as if he were a tree, rooted to the spot, not a twitch to be seen from his fingers, as they held steady over the holster of his gun. Her mother's hand shook on Maddy's chest. Maddy saw a man move out onto the porch of the saloon across the street. He moved slowly, carefully and Maddy wondered if he was trying to see her father better, to see her father facing the bad man who stood across from him. Maddy didn't know why, but sometimes her father stood across from men and shot them with his gun. She thought it had something to do with the shiny star on his vest. There was a flurry of movement, Maddy saw a flash from the balcony, heard her Mother screaming and saw her father was falling, falling…

Maggie O'Shaughnessy sat up gasping in her bedroll. She shakily lifted one of her Wells Fargo Colts and scanned her surroundings. Nothing. Nothing to have wakened her, except the remnants of her own cries. She lay back down, gun in hand, taking deep, calming breathes until she sunk into sleep again.

Father was laying in the street, unmoving a pool of blood soaking the parched ground around him. Maddy wrenched herself from her mother's shaking grip and ran blindly toward him. Stumbling, she fell heavily beside her father. "Da" she screamed, "Da, wake up!" She buried her face into his chest that was sticky with blood. Maybe if she stayed here forever, with him, it would be Ok.

When Maggie opened her eyes the sun was peeking over the mountains to the North. Sighing she sat up and started to stretch out the inevitable kinks that came with sleeping rough. Stirring up the coals, she proceeded to make a simple breakfast of a biscuit and tea boiled in a billy. Within half an hour, she was packed up and swinging herself up on her horse, KD. Checking her Colts were properly holstered she pointed KD in an easterly direction. Destination: Rock Creek.

"I've got an errand for you boys, I need you to ride over to Blue River and deliver a message to the Marshall there". Teaspoon Hunter squinted up at Noah Dixon and Jimmy Hickok. "Should only take you 3 days 'round.

"You want us both to go?" Noah looked questioning at Teaspoon.

"There's been some reports of people getting waylaid along the Blue River trail, figure safety in numbers is sensible." Teaspoon handed an envelope over.

Jimmy shrugged his assent, looking out across the town.

Noah pushed his hat back on his head, "Always liked that stretch of land, nice scenery." He turned to Jimmy, "Leave in an hour? I'll get some grub from Rachel." After thwacking Jimmy across the chest with his hand, he took off with long-legged strides towards the Pony Express station.

"Jimmy, you boys ride careful, hear?" Teaspoon said.

"Always", replied Jimmy, ambling off to saddle the horses.

Maggie usually kept a sharp eye on the trail ahead of her. After all, a young single woman was considered easy pray for the types of men who made a dishonest living thieving off travelers. Many a woman travelled with a fairly substantial purse. Of course, many a woman also travelled with a companion as well. A women on her own, especially a young women, offered a different sort of prize for some men. Maggie made it a habit to dress in men's clothes and kept her curly black hair in a ponytail, shoved under a hat. From a distance she could pass as a young man. Maggie never gave much thought to her appearance; she had more important things to consider. However, if she had ever bothered looking into a mirror she would have seen a set of snapping black eyes, curly black hair that fell halfway down her back when loose, both compliments of her Irish Father. Her sharply angled cheekbones, full-lipped mouth and pointed chin were inherited from her French Canadian Mother. Maggie would never be called pretty by most.

However, today Maggie kept getting distracted by her dreams of the previous night. They were reoccurring dreams, but ones that she had thought she had been growing out of as late. It had been several months since she had last had them and she'd hoped to be finally leaving them behind.

It was that distraction that kept her from noticing the two men awaiting her approach from a stand of trees in the trail ahead. It didn't help that the sun shone directly at her from close behind them. At any rate, she didn't see them until she almost astride them.

"Well, what have we here?"

Maggie pulled her reins in sharply and started to wheel KD away from the man who spoke. However, at the same instant he stepped toward her and cocked his gun, leveling it somewhere around her midsection. She stared a moment at the gun, feeling the crushing weight of panic in her chest.

"It ain't any young mister we's got here, it's a young miss," the man threw over his shoulder to his companion. "Don't worry miss, we ain't going to hurt you, not least in anyways you's won't enjoy some."

Maggie looked into the eyes, creased with dirt and saw nothing to reason with. In what seemed like an eternal instant, Maggie made up her mind as to the situation. When the man reached out to grab her leg, she kicked him full in the face and at the same moment she reached and drew her gun. She heard bones crunch and the man staggered back. She wheeled her horse away and fired in the general direction of the second man she had barely glimpsed, hoping to force him to cover and give her enough time for escape. She heard gunfire from the direction of the copse of trees and felt a hot searing pain in her upper leg. In the same instant, KD went down. She could only assume he'd been struck somewhere as well. She hit the ground hard, jarring her shoulder and wrist as they took most her weight in the fall.

Glimpsing a rock outcropping just ahead, she ran low towards it, limping heavily and yelling "KD, stay down". Another couple of shots pinged ahead of her as she skidded to a stop and collapsed down behind a boulder, her leg giving out. "Shit, shit, shit" she muttered under her breath, opening her gun to reload rounds out of her coat pocket. She slammed the barrel shut, pulled her second gun and positioned to shoot back towards the trees. She had to keep them from shooting KD again; although KD was doing what Maggie hoped was his training, that being only pretending to be a dead horse. She tried to evaluate the situation while firing back in intervals. She had limited ammunition in her coat pocket, maybe ten more rounds, she was losing feeling in her leg and she hadn't any water. She couldn't carry out a long exchange under these conditions. Closing her eyes momentarily, she rested her forehead on the sun-bleached boulder. She'd lived fifteen years, all but the first few of them hard and unforgiving. She'd hoped to at least live long enough to see justice served. There had been other tricky situations and she'd made it through. However, she couldn't see a way out of this one.

Dammit.

More gunfire split the air, this time from a different direction and Maggie's eyes snapped open. She wasn't about to go down without a fight. Hopefully, she'd be taking some of them with her.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A dark haired rider on a palomino and a dark skinned man on a painted horse rode in on the two men in the copse and Maggie saw the one that grabbed at her go down clutching his shoulder, dropping his pistol. The second villain took one look and ran off, leaving his partner cursing in the dirt. The palomino rider slid off his horse, kicked the man's gun away and then picked him off the ground and threw him in the direction his companion had run off in. The man stumbled, fell, cursed, picked himself up and staggered off.

Maggie watched in a mixture of relief and wariness as the dark haired man remounted and the two new riders turned their attention in her direction. People were not always as they seemed out here, she'd learned that the hard way. She didn't know yet if they'd moved in to take over or help. She quickly checked her chambers. Two rounds in one gun, one in the other gun and no time to reload as they rode in on her. She clicked the two guns shut simultaneously and leveled one at each rider. They pulled up short, glancing at each other.

"Mister, we ain't gonna cause you no more trouble, we're just checking in to make sure you don't need no more help." The dark skinned rider nodded towards KD, still lying in the dirt. "Think your horse might be in bad shape".

He kept his hand hovering near a gun on his hip but didn't move to draw. He had a kind face and seemed to have a genuine concern. Maggie's eyes swung over to the second rider. A kind face was not to be seen here. Impassively, he stared right back in her eyes. That was when Maggie noticed that his gun was also drawn, low near the saddle horn and pointed directly at her. Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn't seen him draw but his hand hadn't held a gun when he first approached. Slowly she lowered the gun pointing at his friend, but kept level the one pointing at him.

"I don't want no more trouble here." she growled, pitching her voice as low as she could manage.

"Don't need to be any more trouble if you'd stop pointing your gun at me." The dark haired rider said steadily.

Her eyes slid back to the coloured rider. His expression was wary but his face still held a kindness that she found hard to think as put on. She was at crossroads. To trust or not to trust? She didn't fancy her odds if she started a shoot-out. Two against one, even if she was an excellent shot. She had to make a decision. She examined her gut feelings and taking a deep breath, she threw herself into fates hands. These men had helped her and she was going to trust they were good men. She un-cocked her remaining gun and lowered it.

"Noah, will you check on the horse?" The dark haired rider dismounted and approached. "Miss, my name is Jimmy, that there is my friend Noah, we're riders with the Pony Express."

"Pony express don't send out two riders at once. " Maggie warily shot back, not bothering to pitch her voice this time. She was unnerved that he'd obviously known she was girl since he rode up, unlike Noah.

"That's true," said Jimmy and she saw a small quirk in the corner of his mouth. "We were on our way back from a special errand for the Rock Creek Marshall." The quirk disappeared. "You hurt?"

"Nothing permanent." Maggie hoped she was telling the truth as tried to push herself up off the ground. She wasn't feeling much pain in her leg anymore. She managed to get seated on the boulder and hauled her leg out front. "Looks worse than it is." Maggie hoped this was true too.

"Humph." Lips pursed Jimmy reached down and gently clasped her leg, angling his head from side to side. Then he pulled out a knife and started to cut away her pant leg.

Warning bells rang off and Maggie pulled her gun and pointed it right at the middle of Jimmy's forehead. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" She grated between clenched teeth.

He stopped what he was doing, slowly pulled his hands back, resting them on his thighs. He looked her full in the face. In his eyes she saw a combination of annoyance, wariness and she wasn't sure, but maybe kindness.

"Look, the wound is too far up the leg to roll your pant and we're going to need the extra material for binding anyways. We're not going to hurt you."

And with that he lifted the knife and started cutting away again. Maggie had to ease back the gun so as to keep his head from bobbing into it.

"Horse has got a flesh wound, but nothing that won't heal right quick. Never seen such a talent for playing dead before, this horse belongs in the theatre." Noah chuckled as he coaxed the horse into standing. "He'll be fine to ride home if we take it slow."

Maggie holstered her gun as she watched Jimmy clinically examine and tie up her leg. "You seem mighty handy at this." It was her way of saying sorry.

"Been shot lots." Was his reply "See if you can stand on that?"

Maggie stood up. There was mostly numbness with a sort of aching pain. What she didn't expect was the way the ground tilted underneath her and the rushing noise in her ears. Maggie sat down with a thump and a wave of nausea had her putting her head down between her knees.

Noah was beside her in an instant. "Mister, you OK?"

"Miss" Jimmy's voice matter-of-fact above her.

"What?" Noah asked

"Miss, he's a Miss." Jimmy answered.

"Well, I'll be. Maybe we should call her Lou Two." Noah chuckled again.

"Keep you mouth shut Noah, 'sides Lou One is enough trouble as is."

"My name is Maggie, Maggie O'Shaughnessy." Maggie said, head still between her knees.

"We'll, I'm Noah Dixon and this here is Jimmy Hickok. Nice to make your acquaintance."

"Did that already." Jimmy stated.

"Yeah, but you never give the last name, and it's the last name what makes us sound distinguished." Noah shook his head in obvious disgust.

"Last name what's always getting me into trouble."

Maggie suppressed the urge to laugh. Taking a deep breath, she raised her head again.

"I was on the way to Rock Creek myself, could I ride in with you boys and you can point me towards the hotel?" Maggie took a second deep breath and the world stabilized.

"We'll do better than that, we'll point you towards Rachael and get Doc Vaughn over to see you. You just stick with us and we'll keep you safe." Noah tipped his hat and smiled kindly. "You sure you're able to ride?"

"Yup" Maggie gave a half smile in both directions and pushed herself standing again. This time, everything remained level. "Thank you, both of you for…everything." Noah touched his hat again in acknowledgement.

Maggie turned to Hickok, "Sorry for aiming at you, seems you were just being kind."

"Can't be too careful." Hickok said evenly. "Keeps those guns close, and loaded. We ain't home yet."

Noah helped her up onto KD and the three of them struck up an easy lope in the direction of Rock Creek.


End file.
